"I'm right here." —Abby Griffin, "Resurrection"

The crutches leaned against the couch, his mangled leg was propped up on a pillow on the coffee table. The room felt so foreign to him, but he knew that if he went into the bedroom, he would feel like he was encroaching on a private place. He didn't feel like he had a right to be there, but leaving their quarters would only bring attention to him. He knew that his absence in camp was causing enough worry as it was.

They had returned to Arkadia three days after he and Clarke had been rescued. He vaguely remembered their arrival and being helped out of the rover by Sinclair and Bennett. They assisted him to his quarters, fearing he was still too weak for the crutches that Raven had modified for him. Sinclair tried to raise up issues for the Council and hand back the power to him, but Kane shot him down. When Sinclair pressed, he lashed out, yelling loud enough for everyone in the corridor to hear that he wasn't fit to lead.

That first day, there had been numerous visitors but Clarke was there to turn them all away. He wasn't ready to see anyone, he still wasn't and two days had passed. The knocks didn't stop and Clarke wasn't there to turn them away anymore, she had more pressing matters to deal with because he couldn't. He simply ignored them and, eventually, he stopped hearing the knocks — not because they weren't there, but because he was so wrapped up his own thoughts that he could barely process what was happening around him.

He remembered Abby kneeling in front of him that first night back and he had to blink the images away so he could see her. When he finally focused on her, he could only see the worry on her face. She gently took his hand, but he pulled it away. She told him that she was going to sleep in Clarke's room that night, in the spare bunk. He didn't question her and stared at the wall as she walked away. She found him in the same spot on the couch in the morning, the purple under his eyes telling her that he hadn't slept a minute. She slept in Clarke's room again the second night, but still their bed remained untouched and the purple had grown darker by the following morning.

He knew he was causing her unnecessary worry, but he couldn't bring himself to sleep, though his body desperately needed it. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Reid and the words he had spoken rang in his ears. Kane couldn't live it again, even if it meant his body slowly shutting down.

"Are you sure he's okay?" A voice behind him muttered. He hadn't heard the door open nor his family's noisy entrance. Clarke's worry was touching but unnecessary, he should be worrying about her. She had been avoiding him, he figured it was because of the pain she had seen.

Abby replied in a whisper, "He's coping."

Abby, Clarke, and Benja came into view as they rounded the couch. Benja sat next to him before the girls could stop him and Kane stiffened, leaning away from the boy. The Grounder's affection for him was the most confusing to him. In Kane's eyes, he had kidnapped the boy, taking him from what remained of his people.

Benja's mouth opened, no doubt to ask him a question he didn't have an answer for, but Abby shook her head at the boy. He frowned and looked at Kane before he pulled away and stalked off to his room. Clarke muttered, "I'll talk to him."

"Thank you," Abby said, watching her go before she looked at Kane again. She knelt in front him as if he were a child and asked, "Do you need anything?"

He shook his head.

"You've barely eaten since it happened, Marcus." He didn't flinch at the name anymore. Abby had spent the last six days convincing him that just because Reid had called him 'Marcus' over 'Kane' or anything else, it didn't mean anything. His name wasn't tied to the horror he had experienced at the Grounder's hands. It was just a name.

"I'm not hungry," he murmured. She sighed, but nodded. Slowly, she reached for the bandage on his leg but he said coldly, "Don't."

"I have to change them," she said simply, a frown forming on her lips.

He shook his head. "I don't want to hurt you."

Her brows furrowed in confusion. "Why would you hurt me?"

"The sight of it," he whispered, staring at the dirty bandages, "the sight would hurt you."

She felt herself deflate and her head fell to her chest. She asked quietly, "Will you let Jackson look at it?"

He stared at her for a few moments before he nodded. She pulled herself to her feet and left their quarters without a word. His eyes turned to the chessboard on the coffee table, trying to remember the game that lay abandoned on its surface. He thought it had been with Benja, but he couldn't tell if that was a dream or not. Reality was blurred for him, he was losing his grip on it. He hardly felt like his body was his own, his mind was even worse off.

"She can handle it," a voice behind him said. Clarke came around the couch and sat down next to him. His eyes scanned her face, taking in the healing wounds there. All that remained of her beating was the black eye — now dull yellows and greens — and the fat lip that had nearly subsided back to normal. "She's tougher than you think."

"I know she's tough," he whispered, unable to look at her suddenly.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Clarke said, "She loves you, you know that right?" He nodded slowly, unsure where she was going with this. "I love you too, so does Benja. And Rebecca and Bellamy and Octavia, even Lincoln, Jasper, and Harper. And Monty, Raven, Wick, Miller." He frowned as she took his hand tightly in hers, making sure that he couldn't pull it away. The names meant nothing to him, not now. He knew that he had to distance himself from them or he would hurt them too. "I don't know what he said to you, but there are people here who are willing to fight for you because we love you."

That wasn't what he was worried about. He was worried about not being able to protect them. Clarke was injured because he couldn't protect her from Emerson. He had left Bellamy, Octavia, Lincoln, Nate, and Harper in a war zone, unsure what their current status was. He couldn't help them, not from here, not with this leg and crutches. He felt useless, he knew that Reid was right.

He couldn't even help at Arkadia, he was in self-induced seclusion. Abby and Clarke had been meeting with the rest of the Council since returning to discuss the Mount Weather crisis and Emerson, but he couldn't bare the thought of going to one of the meetings. He couldn't sit there and listen to them while they cast pitied glances his way.

"Kane?" She was looking at him like she had asked a question. He blinked at her and she asked, "Will you forgive me?"

"For what?" He asked, frowning.

"For doing this to you." She motioned to his leg before meeting his eyes again. "I'm so sorry."

He just shook his head and she fell silent. He went back to staring at the chessboard. She reached out and placed her hand on top of his. He was tempted to pull away, but he could feel the tension in her hand and knew that he would cause her even more pain. He knew what it was like to watch someone be beaten in front of one's own eyes. He knew the guilt Clarke was feeling, he felt it to.

"Kane? How did you deal with it?"

"With what, Clarke?" He asked, finally looking at her. She had tears in the corners of her eyes and he felt an overwhelming — and surprising — need to comfort her.

"With causing someone else's pain," she whispered, meeting his eyes. She tightened her grip on his hand and he let her lean against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I know you feel it for what happened to Jasper and Harper, but they've forgiven you."

"Don't think for one second that I blame you, Clarke," he said, looking away from her. He heard her exhale in relief and frowned. There's another person you've hurt, Reid's voice said in his head. He felt a tremor pass through him at the sound. He never wanted to hear it again, but here it was, as clear as if the man himself stood before Kane.

Clarke looked at him with concern and asked, "Hey, are you okay?" He shook his head and she frowned. She leaned closer and wrapped her arms around his torso, squeezing him tight. She whispered, "It's okay. Whatever you're thinking, it's not real."

He nodded and she held him tighter; he felt himself relax into her embrace after a few minutes and she continued to whisper to him, telling him that he was going to be okay.

"Clarke, what happened?" Abby stood in the doorway with Jackson, their entrance unnoticed by him.

Clarke pulled away from him, squeezing his hand as she did. "Nothing."

She rose from the couch and went toward her bedroom, he saw Abby follow her out of the corner of his eye, determined to know what had happened while she was gone. Jackson walked over and knelt next to Kane's injured leg.

"How are you feeling?" Jackson asked, opening the small med kit he had brought with him. Kane appreciated that he ignored what he had seen and was all business.

"Like shit, Jackson," Kane muttered, wincing as Jackson unrolled the bandage. He pulled it away to reveal the two slices in his leg, just above the knee. The knee itself was purple from Reid's 15-hour torture session. It wasn't broken but Abby said that it would likely never be the same again.

Jackson just nodded and examined the two knife wounds. His fingers gently traced the tender flesh and he asked, "Has there been any new pain?"

Kane replied, "No."

"Good," Jackson said, nodding. "We'll take the stitches out once it's healed a bit more. The trauma was extensive."

"I know that," he muttered.

Jackson sighed and began to roll a clean bandage around his thigh. He was nearly done when he whispered, "You're hurting her, you know that right?"

Kane frowned.

Jackson met his eyes and continued, "She just wants to help you, but when you do things like this, it makes it hard for her. Do you know what this is doing to her? She's barely sleeping, a little more than you are, I hear. She lays awake in Clarke's room, waiting to hear you call for her, waiting for you to need her. She won't be okay until you are, Kane."

"I don't know how to be okay," he admitted.

Jackson frowned and he said, "You need to talk to someone about it."

Kane shook his head. "I can't."

"The funny thing is, Kane, that you can. You just don't want to," he said, rising to his feet. "I understand that the Grounder did terrible things, but you won't be able to move past them until you accept that they happened."

The room was pitch black and silent. He never knew when a punch or a kick was coming. They startled him, shocked his system. The uncertainty was the worst, he thought. He could take the pain — he had experienced pain his entire childhood at the hands of his own father — but it was the unpredictability that was driving him mad.

The hours blurred together and he lost track of time, unsure of how long Reid had been berating and abusing him for. He held his ground until Reid left some time in the early hours of the morning then he allowed himself to feel the fear. It consumed him and felt more real than the pain that coursed through his ribs, his knee, his head. His ears strained for the moment he heard the door open, the moment his torcha was back.

That's what Reid called himself and it fit. He was good at it too, Kane felt like he was both on the verge of passing out and alert to any noise that was made outside of the vacuum that was his interrogation room. Reid's return filled Kane with a sense of dread so intense that he felt sick to his stomach. A blinding light flashed in front of him and Kane tried to shut his eyes to it, but something smashed against his knee and his eyes snapped open on reflex as the pain overtook him.

Reid's chilling voice filled the room. "I've been given some information on you, Emerson did his research." He leaned close, his breath tickling Kane's ear. "You should really update your electronic security, Chancellor."

He didn't really understand what he was saying, he was too distracted by the pulsing light in front of him. Reid must have noticed that he had grown used to it because he quickly shut it off, plunging them into darkness.

Reid's voice was close when he spoke again. "You don't like needles, do you? It's here in your medical report, filed by your girlfriend. She was very thorough."

A folder smacked him across the face and Kane moved his jaw after, testing it for any sign of fracture. It was completely silent in the room and Kane tensed against whatever might come next. Reid muttered in his ear, "This is going to burn."

He gripped Kane's arm and jammed something sharp into the bend of his elbow. He knew it was a needle and that made it worse for him. He squirmed away from Reid's grip, but the ropes that bound him were too tight. He was forced to endure the wiggling of the needle within his skin before Reid plunged whatever the vial held into his vein.

'Burn' was a mild way to put the sensation he experienced in the wake of the needle being removed. At first, he was relieved that the needle was gone, but then he felt it. It was like his veins were on fire, like he was burning from the inside out. He tried to scream but Reid had placed a cloth in his mouth of questionable cleanliness the second he was tied to the chair. He had known then that Reid wasn't looking for information — he was looking to break him. As the injection consumed him, he knew that Reid was succeeding.

The flashing light was back again and Kane shook his head, trying to escape it though that was impossible. Reid stood next to the light, his silhouette visible to Kane if he focused on it hard enough. The light was too much, so he didn't look at Reid. "Should we talk about your girlfriend? About the things we could do if she was here?"

Kane was starting to lose it, he knew it. He stared at the floor as Reid talked about the ways he would defile Abby, about what he would make Kane watch him do to her. He felt the anger boil within him and when he finally looked at Reid as best he could, he found a smirk on his face. The Grounder stood in front of the light now, allowing Kane to focus on him. He wanted nothing more than to tear the man limb from limb, but he didn't exactly have the advantage.

Reid smiled and said, "You don't like that, do you?"

Kane just stared at him.

The torcha laughed and said, "She wouldn't either. Then again, you've nearly gotten her killed — was it twice, now? You never answered for those crimes against her, did you? Maybe we should take care of that."

Something that felt like a hammer smashed against his knee and Kane screamed into the cloth.

He woke with a start, the scream dying on his lips. The light under Clarke's door flashed on almost-instantly and the door opened a few seconds later. Abby's eyes found his and he felt the tears prick at his eyes as he watched her hurry to his side. She knelt in front of him and took his hand in her own, whispering, "What's wrong, Marcus?"

He fought to control his breathing before he responded, "A nightmare."

She seemed almost relieved, probably because he had a least slept for a little bit. "It's okay," she whispered, reaching up to stroke his short beard. He flinched away from the contact and she let her hand fall but kept her other one firmly on his, grasping it tightly. "You're not there anymore, okay? Nothing's going to happen to you."

He shook his head and she waited for him to say something. He finally said, "It already happened. Abby," his voice broke on her name and he watched the tears collect in her eyes. "I don't know how to come back from this."

Her head lowered to her chest as she took in a ragged breath. She looked up at him again and whispered, "We'll get through this together, okay?" He nodded and she smiled warmly at him, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. "Do you want me to stay with you? We don't have to talk. We can sit in silence, you can sleep if you want to."

"Don't leave me, Abby," he found himself pleading though something within him wanted to scream at her to get as far away from him as possible. She nodded and settled on the couch next to him. It wasn't long before he felt the tears take over and he was shaking. She wrapped her arms around him and he surprised her by sinking into her embrace. She whispered, "You're going to be okay, Marcus. I promise."

He nodded against her collarbone and gripped her tightly, afraid of letting her go and afraid of her staying.

As usual, reviews are always welcomed and appreciated! Let me know how much of an asshole writer I'm being by ruining Marcus Kane like this.

-Lauren